holes in the air

When I think about the space
which I’ve never seen
I just want to dance in it
for space without walls excites me.

I’ve located the want. It’s itchy and dense,
steamed pudding in my chest making
both my legs ache when I hold them still.
I watch myself wait.

But then...
there will be people there,
floor spread with the confetti of their clothes
and white candle-legs.
In my head they surround me
on a blank stretch of floor
which is circular, the colour of
soft fruit washed in light.

I begin to doubt my daring and its justification.

For it won’t really be a performance, as such.
Performance, which has the first four letters of:
Perfect
Perfection
Perfected

‘But just offer what is in you.’
Treat the screen
the floor
the view
like an open invitation. It will
throw back everything that you believe
is, and at once, is not you.
Dumb, but breathing, it does not
have the capacity to judge.
It’s sole business is transport.

I’m dodging the issue.
Stumbling about.
I can’t find centre, I can’t find north.
Well, that’s no use if you feel like dancing.
It’s all about direction, spatial awareness:
an architecture of limbs.
You dared to sing, so why not
let some sounds get onto your skin
and be witnessed.

But it may be safer not to offer at all
than to offer something remembered and then
refused?

There are several scenarios.
I’ll lie or I’ll freeze.
(The middle path through the
two of these is my deepest hope,
where beauty is unburied and breathes.)

Was it specified that there had to be talent?
Trained people will be there.
I should not trespass their vocation.

I don’t know how I look when I dance.
Not quite placeable, polite or sure.
So watch me with your eyes closed
and ears broad, and
know that I am
just trying.

Dance might be an expression of joy
that sex can be, but
usually isn’t.
But it’s not even joy, so much as
‘thusness’:
a sad arm, a nonchalant head, or a leg taking a quirky arc
then stopping, slapped short, sole to the floor.
Thus
Thus
Thus.
The body talking to us in our
favourite frequencies.

We’re back in the space.
There is the circle and the light
and I wash up under interrogation
- body affected or the limbs tongue-tied -
and I see myself falling - face smashing, bloodied mouth
and joints dislocating at horrific angles
- lamentable, unrepentable
I will be seen and there will be no going back,
my insides on display for free,
form fixed and burnt into the retina of strangers
who may not forgive me for celebrating
a space already named.

Because to express a fragile truth
or to travel a clear arc
is emancipation.

If I were to say something true,
home would be in my tongue.
If I were to dance something true,
wouldn’t I cease to have a body at all?

I cannot know the relationship we’ll share
as I move and you stare, you who
too
may long to find holes in the air
and wear them like jewellery.